AC Milan made it six wins in a row in all competitions with a 2-1 victory against Fiorentina at the Stadio Artemio Franchi, a ground where they have struggled in recent years.
All three goals came inside a dramatic seven-minute period in the second half. The first came from Ruben Loftus-Cheek as he finished from close range after Rafael Leao’s feed to get his ninth goal of 2024.
Fiorentina then equalised when Alfred Duncan was given way too much space to stride forward with the ball and pick out the corner, but then Tijjani Reijnders put Rafael Leao through on goal and he converted to restore the lead.
That would be enough for Milan to seal a big win and in the process move six points ahead of Juventus, who were beaten late on by Lazio earlier in the evening.
A pressing alteration
ScoutCalcio picked out some interesting notes from the game, starting with Stefano Pioli’s change in pressing to a 4-4-2 which is actually reminiscent of how the Primavera press under Ignazio Abate.
Pioli changed the way that the Rossoneri would press to try make it more effective, moving Rafael Leao inside to centre-forward and then exploiting Tijjani Reijnders’ and Olivier Giroud’s work rate.
It seems simple on paper, but why did it work? The press was more effective this time largely because of Giroud’s hustle.
In the clip below the 37-year-old Frenchman shows it, because if he had stopped after being dribbled past it would’ve forced Ruben Loftus-Cheek to move away from his man and thus space would have opened up down the centre.
In the examples below you can see again that it is Giroud in the midfield tracking the player and putting him under pressure before he receives the ball.
If he didn’t put this work in, the player would have had acres of space because Ismael Bennacer was dragged out of his position to follow his marker.
The similarity to Abate
As mentioned, there are some similarities with the pressing system that Abate uses with the Primavera side, something which became noticeable towards the end of last year.
The coach changed the way that his side move off the ball and apply pressure to opponents, tweaking to a 4-4-2 as a more compact way to force the opponent to play around you since the centre is closed.
Hugo Cuenca also pressed the full-back instead of Adam Bakoune, just as an example of how the positions interchanged.
